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Over the last few months I’ve been working on a 5% to 25% plan for trading cryptocurrency. This is a plan to always hold at least 5% to 25% of any long term cryptocurrency position. There are several reasons for doing this.

Accumulate some nice trading positions

Have coin to sell for unpredicted price increases

Build a really strong portfolio

My original plan was a strict 25% rule, but as I started to incorporate it, I realized that wasn’t always plausible. One reason was, depending on what you purchased the coins for, 25% is a large portion to hold. Especially if you’re selling on a 10% to 25% gain. Technically you end up holding your profits. This may not be a bad idea with some really strong coins, but for other weaker coins this may not be such a good idea.

For this reason I decided to make a judgment call based on individual coin performance. For the most part though, I now keep a small portion of almost every coin I trade. Roughly I keep 5% to 25% of every long term coin I hold.

A few exceptions to the rule. Pump and dump shitcoins. Although I rarely buy into these, occasionally I speculate on complete shitcoins. These are abandoned coins with no dev or scammy devs, or no real use case. Many exchanges are full of these coins and although The Dood tries to stay away from shitcoin projects, sometimes you can just tell which way the chart is going to head and you just can’t resist. Remember though, if you get burned on a shitcoin, you have nobody to blame but yourself! I try to cash out as fast as I buy into these projects. Remember, the best way to not get burned is to simply stay away from projects like this in the first place.

Another exception to this rule might be catching a flash crash. You buy the bottom and sell the top for a quick profit. Profits are usually taken within a couple hours. I’ve been lucky enough to catch a few flash crashes, but if I don’t completely believe in the project, why bother hodling any significant position?

Another exception is occasionally I’ll take on a project and get paid in cryptocurrency. If I don’t like the coin, I just cash out to BTC. No sense in holding a coin you don’t like.

Now I started incorporating this rule before this last bull run and I have to say it has improved my trading considerably. For one thing, I’ve accumulated some nice bags of coins. I currently keep a journal of my base bag, or coins that I won’t sell unless an emergency arises and I need money. The really good news is, using this system, emergency cash or crypto is always on hand.

Another benefit from this is I no longer fear the early sell. A great example of this was BitShares. I bought a ton in May around 300 satoshi, sold a bunch in June at around 3000 satoshi and then watched the price continue to climb to 16,000 satoshi. The old me would of shot my load early. We all hate to admit it but hey it happens from time to time. Using the 25% rule I was able to sell a nice chunk of coins that I purchased around 300 satoshi for around 16,000 satoshi a couple months later. I still kept a small amount just in case, but had no issues watching the price drop as I began to buy back my position at around 5000 – 6000 satoshi. I’m really happy with this short sell.

That’s just one example, of the benefits I’ve recieved since starting to do this. I’ve also watched my portfolio size grow in both coins accumulated and value of BTC. The downside to this is the portfolio value will swing considerably. At one point I was down a considerable amount in BTC value, however, all the coins are paid for at this point so you’re literally playing with “the houses money” as they say.

Another benefit is, when your coins are paid for, losing your position in an attempted short doesn’t hurt as bad as losing twice on coins you were already losing on. Sell short at the top, and buy back cheap for maximum gains on paid coins. It’s a win win!

My overall goal with this however is to create some nice postions of various coins that I feel are strong and have a bright future. Imagine buying Ethereum back in 2015 at 50 cents each and still having a bunch to sell today at around $200 to $400 dollars. Nobody really knows which of these coins will be winners or losers, but chances are that there are still plenty of Dash’s and Ethereum’s out there. Keeping a small nest egg of these coins around for future speculation certainly can’t be a bad idea. Who knows maybe those 1000 coins you put aside today, will go up to $100 USD 5 years from now and will be worth around $100,000… These things happen all the time in this game, and if we don’t at least attempt a long term strategy these types of gains will never come to us.

To summarize, my long-long term strategy is to build and hold as many coins as I can. I have to follow each project closely and watch for any signs of trouble so I can plan an emergency exit if needed. Holding anywhere from 5% to 25% of my coins, in the end, if just a couple of these bigger projects really take off and become the next Ethereum, Monero or DASH, I plan on reaping the benefits of being an early adopter and long term hodler.

As usual nothing here is meant as financial advice. This is just a strategy that I’m working on for me. Please seek a duly licensed professional for finanacial advice, not some guy on the internet who refers to himself as The Dood. Never forget, cryptocurrency trading is extremely risky and never invest more than you can afford to lose! Thanks for reading and happy trading everyone.

I was just talking with a friend on twitter about DASH cryptocurrency. Before the rebranding to DASH, it was called DARKcoin. It was during this time that I made the most expensive mistake of not only my crypto trading career, but probably my life. Apparently my friend had made the exact same mistake. I’m going to share with you the most expensive lesson I ever learned.

When DARKcoin first came out, there was a lot of controversy about pre-mines, and who owned what as far as coin holders. This caused a lot of price volatility and created plenty of opportunities to pick up some really cheap DARKcoin at times. Even with all the FUD, most people involved in the cryptocurrency space immediately seen that this coin and it’s developers were onto something as they promoted the DARKcoin, and tried to tackle the problem of TRUE cryptocurrency anonymity.

The Dood bought a bunch of DARKcoin on one of the dips. A really low buy order got filled and I got some really cheap coin. It wasn’t a large amount, maybe about 1500 coins, I can’t remember what the transaction cost me, but I remember I got them cheap.

As usual I bought and sold them several times. I was fairly new to trading crypto then and I would sell the “TOP”, then buy back on another dip. Often, I would dump my entire position and buy back later at a much cheaper price. This is called “shorting your position”

When DARKcoin rebranded from DARK to DASH I learned the most expensive lesson of my trading career. Never dump your entire position unless you’re planning on completely exiting a market. Even then you may want to re-think dumping everything, because this is crypto trading, and anything is possible.

I learned this the hard way, and a year or so later I was watching a stock trading video on youtube and the guy said the same thing. NEVER DUMP YOUR ENTIRE POSITION on a short. The reason for this is very simple, if the price continues to rise, you will have to buy your position back at a loss. Now this also breaks my second rule of trading. NEVER CHASE AFTER COINS. If a coin gets away from you, let it go, the market always presents a re-entry point. Usually!

So DARKcoin rebrands to DASH and like so many coin rebrands it was met with rising coin prices, lots of hype, and the price rising considerably. This is where I made my biggest mistake. What I thought was certain to be a pump, and all the hype of the relaunched coin under a new name, I dumped my full position at what I thought was the “TOP” and it just kept climbing and climbing. Not willing to break my second rule, I never bought back in! What amounted to no more than a few dollars in trading profits would of traded today at well over $60,000 !

Dash at current prices my coins would of been worth around $60,000!

DASH continued to rise and rise, and after it climbed to well over $10.00 I just stopped paying attention. A lot of people made this same mistake during the rebrand and you can imagine the emotions that arise when they realize the opportunity that they missed out on. For me it’s the one that got away, and for this reason I rarely sell more than 50% of any position I have in a coin. No matter what, I always hang on to at least 25% of any coins position just in case.

When you remember how you dumped your DASH early.

Today, if I would of sold my 25% position of the original 1500 coins, I would of had about 375 coins worth about $42 each for a total of around $15,750 dollars. Live and learn!

Thanks for reading and happy trading everyone!

Originally posted on my Steemit. If you’re on Steemit, hope you decide to follow The Dood.

LINK: Video & tutorial on trading the head and shoulders pattern.

Technical analysis of charts can sometimes be very helpful to traders. There are many different patterns or trends that appear in stock and cryptocurrency charts. Understanding these patterns and recognizing them can help give the investor an edge.

Nothing is 100% when speculating on price, but this is a simple tool, many investors use to watch the price and speculate on its next likely position.

Disclaimer: Please read!

Nothing here is meant to be taken as financial advice. All information is posted strictly as opinion. Please seek a duly licensed professional for financial advice, not some guy on the internet who refers to himself as The Dood.
Many thanks to Feedspot.com for listing The Dood in their list of top 100 Bitcoin related blogs. I feel so honored to be included in your great list of cryptocurrency bloggers! You can find the complete list of bloggers here Full list here